Unfortunately, I have not been posting as often as I would like to in recent weeks so I thought this might be a good opportunity to share a talk/discussion that I gave on Friday night at my house (For more details see 'Shabbat Salon' facebook group). It was on the subject of Moses Mendelssohn, a character who has fascinated me for a number of years and a man whose life exemplifies what I see the very real challenges faced by the Orthodox Jew in the modern world today. This is a long piece but I hope to succinctly highlight a few of the more critical challenges and themes of his life and times. My sources for this information are a combination of Alexander Altmann's classic biography of Mendelssohn, the Encyclopedia Judaica article on him and Rabbi Rakeffet's shiurim on YU Torah:
Firstly, some background. Whilst it is very difficult to claim with any honesty that the world of the 'Ghetto' (the walled parts of the city where Jews were forced to live in most of Europe spanning a period of around 300 years) was any sort of religious utopia, it did have some distinctive characteristics which are important to appreciate in the context of the 18th century. Firstly, rabbinic leaders had significant power and were responsible for the legal as well as moral conduct of the Jewish communities. The ability to impose the Herem on recalcitrant and rebellious individuals was a serious threat. Excommunication would invariably lead to beggary and quite possibly death at the hands of the local authorities. If you defected from observance you rarely left the community.
It is also important to emphasise that in Central and eastern Europe Talmud Torah was the context, focus and frame of reference for daily life. R. Noson Hanover, in describing the destruction wrought by the Chmielnicki massacres in 1648-49, depicts a scene where most households contained scholars and budding Talmidei Chachamim. Whilst it is clear that not every household produced first-rate talmidei chachamim, excellence in Talmud Torah was the aspiration for every intelligent youngster. Particularly talented individuals such as Mendelssohn in the 1740s would follow their Rebbeim to the big cities or seek out the leaders of the generation to learn from them. They would be funded by a system called 'Teg' where local families would effectively adopt one of these scholars into their houses, feed them, and sometimes marry them off to their daughters.
But it is also clear that by the mid-18th century cracks were beginning to appear in the walls of the ghetto. The winds of change from the outside world carrying the spirit of humanism and enlightenment which placed an increasing focus on man at the centre of universe rather than God was beginning to take its toll on the sheltered Jewish world too. The question of whether the Jew was 'happy' in the Ghetto is a contentious one, but regardless of how Jews themselves felt, they required the approval of the outside world to indulge any curiosity with foreign ideas.
The Shabbatai Tzvi episode in the mid 17th century had caused divides and upheavals within the Jewish world, with antinomian splinter movements forming across Europe even after the furore had subsided. By
middle of 1700s cracks in the Ghetto walls had become a breach, exemplified by a Teshuva from the Rav of Alsace-Lorraine R.Yaakov Steinhart about men and women who rented a hall
for mixed dancing for Shavuos holidays. In addition, as Jacob Katz demonstrates in his classic book on Jewish history Tradition and Crisis, the power and authority of the rabbinate had declined markedly since its medieval heyday.
- The decisive breach, it can be argued, came about due to the actions of one man, Moses Mendelssohn, or R' Moshe Dessau, whose dates are 1729-1786. Mendelssohn was the Great Grandson
of the Remo and an observant Jew from the day of his birth till the day died, a first rate Talmid
chacham, evidenced from his correspondence with R. Yaa'kov Emden (Notice the picture of his wife, Fromet Gugenheim who covers her hair fully).
-
- As I mentioned earlier, Mendelssohn's early years comprised of a classical Yeshiva education. As the student of the classic commentator on the Talmud Yerushalmi, R. David Hirschel Frankel ( The 'Korban Eidah'), Mendelssohn decided to follow his Rebbe to Berlin at the age of 14 as Dessau (his hometown) had no yeshiva. Berlin was a large and prominent city and a budding centre for the increasingly popular enlightenment trends. Whilst the Berlin Ghetto walls were locked at night, by day he was able to move around, and gained exposure to discussion groups and Salons, becoming sensitive to the intellectual trends around him in the western world beyond the confines of Ghetto life.
By all accounts in possession of formidable intellect, Mendelssohn taught himself German, Greek and Latin and spent his days avidly studying different philosophical works. Winning many friends and admirers along the way, Mendelssohn developed a reputation as a thinker of note amongst gentiles as well as Jews and the key turning point of his intellectual life came in 1762, when he was awarded the prize for philosophy by the Royal Academy of
Sciences, beating Immanuel Kant to first prize.
As the intimate friend of several prominent enlightenment thinkers, notably Ephraim Gottfried Lessing, the local government eventually allowed Mendelssohn to leave the ghetto. The significance of this was not so much that he was allowed to leave, as others had been invited for their financial skills and usefulness to the local rulers, but rather the reason for his invitation. Mendelssohn was valued as a liberal and intelligent Jew and seen as someone who deserved this chance on human merit alone. Additionally, Mendelssohn left the ghetto and never looked back, embracing the world outside out of choice. Having established himself outside the walls, Jews followed him, first in a trickle and then in a flood, as Jew and gentile were reunited once again.
During the 1760s Mendelssohn devoted most of his time to pure philosophy, focusing on general issues such as the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. Yet several events occurred in his life which made him turn to the affairs of the Jewish community, both in a theoretical and practical sense. in 1769, John Lavater, a Christian clergyman, challenged Mendelssohn to prove the superiority of Jewish religion. Taken aback by this demand, Mendelssohn refused on do so on three grounds:
Firstly, that the Torah was only for Jews and was devoid of missionary tendencies, secondly that “fundamental conceptions should not be subjected to debate, even if they are based on error, as long as they serve as the basis for the morality of the society and do not infringe upon natural law”, and thirdly that as members of an oppressed minority, challenging the majority religion would be foolish on political grounds. Yet the Lavater affair dragged on and it took several years for him to leave Mendelssohn alone. Probably as a result, Mendelssohn developed a nervous mental disease which affected his ability to concentrate and lasted seven years, where he complained of being unable to think for long periods of time.
With the Lavater affair came the realisation that there was a massive difference between him and his colleagues, and as a result decided to devote himself to the needs of the Jewish community. He fought personally against anti-Jewish decrees in Switzerland (1775), and represented the community of Koeningsberg (1777) in proving that prayers were not anti-Christian and didn’t need a supervisor.
- Yet Mendelssohn is a controversial figure largely due to his views on the Jewish religion. A child of the enlightenment trends of the 17th and
18th Centuries, Mendelssohn placed an emphasis on reason as the sole medium through which man
gains knowledge, and the eternally valid and innate ideas of absolute truth. His broad-minded approach to life, which embraced foreign cultures and ideas, played a significant part in his position visa vis the Jewish community. In his treatise for tolerance to Jews, he called on the Jews to abandon attitudes opposed to freedom of man and freedom of thought such as the Herem and accept non-religious government appointed judges.
-
Many accused him of going too far – his classic work 'Jerusalem' which attempts to establish Judaism as a religion of reason was
stimulated by a letter from an apostate accusing him of rejecting rabbinic authority: “How then can you, my dear Mr. Mendelssohn, continue to adhere to the
faith of your fathers yet shake the entire structure by removing its very
foundation since you deny the ecclesiastical law, given by Moses, which derives
its authority from divine revelation”
-
It was this new and far more fundamental challenge that Mendelssohn found himself forced to defend – why did he not
embrace the universal religion that he was so keen on emphasising and abandon the particularism of Judaism? How could he reject
coercion if he believed in Torah min ha Shamayim? The answer he gave was one of the first, and it must be added, unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the worlds of enlightenment philosophy and Torah min ha Shamayim.
He divided church and state into separate realms. According to Mendelssohn, man derives truth from reason
alone, but unlike medieval Jewish thinkers thinkers who saw revelation and reason as complementary, redefined Judaism not as a religion but as revealed legislation. What distinguished Jew from non-Jew was not
religion but unique laws taken as historical facts witnessed with
incontrovertible clarity, which also prescribed rules of life that guide the individual to divine
truths. The explanations he gave for the mitzvoth were largely based on historical and expedient considerations. This led later thinkers to accuse him of promoting a 'fossilised' Judaism. Whilst he tried to establish true loyalty to state and also to the Torah, he couldn't remove the practical opposition between the two.
In addition, he promoted the study of the Hebrew language and
German over Yiddish as part of acculturation on the part of the Jews, and his major work of biblical translation was Biur, a commentary on the Torah which was translated into
German, an essentially traditional commentary although containing a few modern conceptions and
aesthetic aspects. The translation of the Torah into German aroused aroused anger of many Rabbis, who saw the dangers in moving the study of Torah away from the strictly religious realm, but this did not deter Mendelssohn, whose views are expressed in the quotes below.
When he died in 1786 he was mourned throughout the Jewish world, and upon the 100th anniversary of his death, he was commemorated in Berlin as a hero of the Jewish community.
Certainly, many Rabbinic thinkers of the 19th century sought to disassociate themselves from Mendelssohn. His translation of Biur is famously attacked in the will of the Chasam Sofer. Yet he lived in a world which had become intoxicated with the freedom that the collapse of the ghetto walls had provided. The rabbinate had been weakened greatly, and outside the ghetto their power was extremely limited.
The following excerpts from Mendelssohn's writings demonstrate this very tension and for me are powerful examples of his tireless attempt to fight with the two worlds that were such important parts of his life in a way that can only be described as deeply religious:
On Love of the Torah:
1.
The experience
of many centuries also teaches that this divine law book has become a source of
knowledge from which a large segment of the human race draws new insights or
corrects old notions. The more you search in it , the more you will be
astounded at the depth of the insights hidden in this…the more closely you
approach it and the purer, the more innocent, the more loving and longing is
the glance with which you look upon it, the more it will unfold its divine
beauty…
2.
Letter June 29,1779 on
decision to change focus in life after illness:
According to the first plan of
my life, as I designed it in my better years, I was far removed from ever
becoming an editor or translation of the Bible. I wanted to confine myself to
having silken materials manufactured during the day and to being in love with
philosophy in my free hours. However, it has pleased providence to lead me
towards a different path. I lost the ability to meditate and, as a result,
initially the major portion of my happiness. After some examination I found
that the remainder of my strength might still be sufficient to render a useful
service to my children, and perhaps toa considerable part of my nation, by
giving into their hands a better transaltion and explanation of the holy
scriptures than they had before. This is the first step toward culture, from
which, alas, my nation is kept as such a distance that one might almost despair
of the possibility of an improvement.
3.
Controversial position on
Jewish religion in letter to inquisitive student, 1783:
To say it in one sentence: I
believe that Judaism knows nothing of a revealed religion in the sense in which
Christians understand this term. The Israelites possess a divine legislation –
laws, commandments, ordinances, rules of life, instruction in the will of G-d
as to how they should conduct themselves in order to attain temporal and
eternal felicity.
4.
Letter to Sophie Becker in
1785 in reply to her question about struggling with faith vs rationalism + how
it had taken the childish fun out of life, fascinating reply (Altmann p.719):
…Philosophy
is meant to make me happier than I would be without it. I must remain true to
this vocation. I stay with her so long as she is a good companion; when she
pulls supercilious, frosty, or even sour faces and gets into a bad mood, I
leave her alone and play with my children…I rejoice in every religious custom
that does not lead to intolerance and hatred of men…You say that the
philosopher does not pray – at least not aloud or in song but, at most in
thought. Dearest Sophie! When his hour comes and he is attuned to praying, the
philosopher will, against his intent, burst into word and song. The most common
man, it seems to me, does not sing in order that Gd may hear him and be pleased
with his melodies. We sing for our own sakes, and this the wise man does just
as the fool does.”
-
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please only write a comment if it is constructive/entertaining. Any abusive posts will result in comments being removed/ comment section withdrawn.